I just did a hardware comparison for the company I work for, they want to buy all of the programmers new laptops. The MacBook Pro was roughly $1200 overpriced at the performance bracket I analyzed. Here's an example:

The MacBook pro has a slightly better screen resolution, less storage capacity (but the SSD would have faster read access), and I'm not even sure what GPU it comes with, but I guarantee the Alienware's dual 460s would top it. The Alienware has an extra inch on screen size as well.

So can someone (other than a fanboy) tell me why this MacBook Pro is $740 more than the Alienware and $1500 more than the XPS?

The MacBook Pro comes to $2949 without the SSD which shouldn't be there as it isn't a fair comparison. For some of the rest of the price difference? Build quality, battery life, etc.

And, the Alienware isn't in the same category as the MacBook Pro, it's a gaming laptop. It'll most definitely beat the 6750M in the GPU department, but it'll just fail hard in terms of battery life (as gaming laptops do), etc.

The MacBook Pro comes to $2949 without the SSD which shouldn't be there as it isn't a fair comparison. For some of the rest of the price difference? Build quality, battery life, etc.

And, the Alienware isn't in the same category as the MacBook Pro, it's a gaming laptop. It'll most definitely beat the 6750M in the GPU department, but it'll just fail hard in terms of battery life (as gaming laptops do), etc.

Well technically the XPS and Alienware are extra with the RAID0 setup as well, that doesn't come standard.

I concede your point on battery life if that's what somebody needs. We were specifically looking for gaming performance, because these laptops would be going to video game programmers. Regardless, when buying top-of-the-line laptops, battery life is rarely a factor, if you want battery life get at 15" version with a low-power Core i5 or something.

Well technically the XPS and Alienware are extra with the RAID0 setup as well, that doesn't come standard.

True. But even so, it subtracts a lot less than an SSD (especially from Apple) adds

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I concede your point on battery life if that's what somebody needs. We were specifically looking for gaming performance, because these laptops would be going to video game programmers. Regardless, when buying top-of-the-line laptops, battery life is rarely a factor, if you want battery life get at 15" version with a low-power Core i5 or something.

Ah, I see. That'd mean the Alienware would be more suitable. However, Apple unlike many other competitors, don't have many lines. They don't have a gaming specific laptop.

You'd be surprised, from what I know the 17" MacBook Pro does pretty well in terms of battery life (and I don't think the 15" does much better as it's so similar). Apple's site lists 7 hours for the MacBook Pro (and that's with their newer, more accurate tests which are closer to real world usage than the previous ones they did).

I'm very interested to see the redesign of the MacBook Pro next year... hopefully it's a big improvement.